Staff
Sgt. Nathan LaHaie, a MATES wage grade leader, said the Wisconsin Army
National Guard organization has two missions. The first is the field
maintenance for units it supports. The second is to store and perform
maintenance on equipment that units canít maintain at their home
stations.

MATES,
which is a tenant organization at Fort McCoy, serves as a central
facility to receive, store, maintain and issue equipment for National
Guard units so all units will have the best equipment with which to
train.

LaHaie
said MATES supports a number of units, such as engineers, artillery,
transportation, maintenance and combat service-support units.

"Units
can come here and use the equipment we maintain at Fort McCoy for
training at Fort McCoy," LaHaie said. "This potentially
could save a mobilizing unit from having to ship its equipment here
and then having to ship it to where it was being deployed."

In
addition to mobilizing units, the equipment could be used by units
coming to Fort McCoy to conduct extended combat training, battle
assembly training and predeployment training.

Any
unit that wishes to use the equipment must have a legitimate reason to
use the equipment for training, LaHaie said.